Listening to The Doors when I was 9 and 10 opened up my musical world so much more than bands like the Beatles did. Don’t get me wrong, I love yellow submarines as much as the next u-boat commander but I met the darkly cool poet persona in songs like The End and Waiting for the Sun. I became all too familiar with the torture of losing friends, and of longing for closure when I was a teenager.

Hearing Morrison sing, “waiting for you to tell me what went wrong” still resonates with me as much as it did when I was in junior high. I could relate to that so much more than when Lennon and McCartney sang, “I wanna hold your hand.” I never held girls’ hands in school.

Along with the vocals and lyrics in Break on Through, the gritty distorted guitar, the vox continental organ, the bossa nova drums always remind me of driving, accelerating, smashing through whatever it is that keeps me locked up inside myself.